Friday

Apr 20, 2018 at 5:00 AMMay 1, 2018 at 11:07 AM

Boston area fans who missed Joe Perry's "Sweetzerland Manifesto" tour in Boston this week shouldn't be worried, because they should have several opportunities to hear the legendary Aerosmith guitarist in the coming months. Perry was home at his Duxbury home at least - this week before the Boston show and we got a chance to chat on Monday night.

While looking forward to the show last Wednesday, which he called "kind of a homecoming," Perry noted that his schedule for the immediate future is fairly well packed already.

"We've got a Hollywood Vampires tour coming up, and we've just about finished that record (the band's second)," said Perry. "We have a few dates around the States at the end of May, and then we'll start our tour of Europe in July. I'd personally like to tour this ("Sweetzerland Manifesto") record more in the fall. This Boston date is the third one on this little swing, and it is the third lineup we've had, so we'd have to figure out who's available to tour more in the fall."

And of course, there is some news on the Aerosmith front too.

"Based on the last conversations I've had with Steven (Tyler), we're going to get together in the fall to work on some new music for Aerosmith," Perry noted. "We would then be ready for some spring dates. Our 50th year anniversary as a band is coming up, and there are a lot of plans for that. We're kind of laying low until then. I know Steven has his own tour going to Europe this summer too, so we'll probably be over there at the same time."

Perry has homes in Duxbury, Pomfret, Vermont, and West Los Angeles, but local fans haven't seen much of him lately. That's kind of how the new record came about, as his fellow Hollywood Vampire, film star Johnny Depp, offered the guitarist free reign at his state-of-the-art home studio. Various opportunities to provide music for movie soundtracks also came Perry's way, so spending more time on the West Coast became more attractive.

"We have been spending most of our time in California," Perry explained. "But we've also been back to Florida some too, where my wife Billie's family - her mother and sister - are. But as much as I like Duxbury, and New England, it's easy to get used to those West Coast sunsets. Right after I finished my book (2014's "Rocks: My Life In and Out of Aerosmith"), was when we started staying in L.A. more. I began to get more soundtrack work, so it made sense to spend more time out there."

"Then this solo album came up, and with a lot of the people associated with projects that I wanted to do out there, it became kind of easy to bypass Boston for a while," Perry added. "My oldest son still lives here though, so he's been sending pictures of all the fallen trees and stuff. I feel as if I've been living out of a suitcase for a lot of years now anyway."

"We had a lot of things going on," Perry said in an understatement. "Months went by and I had five or six soundtrack things, we did an Aerosmith tour, then the Hollywood Vampires tour. But if I could, I'd show up in the studio almost every day and work on this album. Johnny Depp came in at one point, and told me this movie he was working on, "LAbyrinth," had a few spots in the soundtrack they needed to fill in, if I was interested. I spent two or three weeks on that. So, I had a lot of projects on the side, and no pressure to make this album. It was just in this last year that we got all the material, edited it, and kind of glued it all together."

The new album, which Perry freely admitted aims to be an updated take on classic rock and blues rock, features guest stars like David Johansen, Terry Reid, and Robin Zander on vocals, along with Depp on drums or percussion a cut or two. If you want to see it as a return his 1970s blues-rock roots, with folks like 1970s' British blues-rocker Reid singing on three of the tunes, and Johansen blowing some mean blues harp on gritty blues numbers, you'd be correct.

"I suppose you could call it kind of 'a busman's holiday,'" Perry said. "Everybody in our band (Aerosmith) has a lot of friends in California. It is where the music business is, so you make a lot of friends out there. Being in Boston, we'd only see them when they came through town on a tour. But when you're out there, you're able to hang out with all those friends. I really enjoyed the opportunity to spend time out there and play with all these different people. With this record, and Johnny Depp generously offering the use of his studio, it was great because so many talented people live, like, literally, half a mile down the road. We'd just ask people, if they had an evening off, to come on over and jam with us."

Cheap Trick's vocalist Zander was a unique case, since he was just touring in the L.A. area. The song Zander sings on is the album's first single, the vibrant rocker "Aye Aye Aye," which could be paean to a woman, or a guitar or both.

"Robin Zander was on the road with his band, and when they came into L.A. they had a couple days off," Perry said. "Instead of us writing together, he told me he had an idea for a song, and sang it to me over the phone. When he came over we worked it up, and it sounded pretty good, but it came about kind of like the blues thing (the "Honkin' On Bobo" Aerosmith album), really spontaneous."

Perry had initially thought of doing an all instrumental album, but eventually those casual jams sessions evolved into sessions where he'd collaborate with some of his favorite peers.

"This whole thing started when Johnny offered me his studio, and it was really convenient," said Perry. "I wasn't thinking of another solo album, but as I was finishing the book, and the studio was right around the corner, I got started. I had been thinking of doing an all instrumental album, and so I was editing my first efforts with that in mind. The first song I cut, back in 2012, was 'Eve of Destruction,' which I'd been wanting to cover for a long time. I felt it was a great song for the times when it came out in the 1960s, and every decade since it works. In these strange times we're living in now, it especially works, so we did a rough version of that one right away with Johnny on drums."

Perry's rendition of the mid-60s Barry McGuire hit (a P.F. Sloan composition) slows it down to a sort of blues-rock march, with a faint hint of ominous things underlying the music. It is a contemplative take on the old nugget, with its own sort of power due to the fact - as he said - that it is still relevant.

Some of the other tunes came about in friend-of-a-friend connections. Music industry veteran, and longtime Aerosmith friend, Jack Douglas was an especially valuable facilitator.

"Jack Douglas living down the street was a big help," Perry said, laughing. "He would stop in to see how we were doing, and one day he said 'that sounds like something David Johansen ought to hear.' So that sounded good to me, and David ended up coming out to L.A. and spent a week with us."

Our pick for the new album's best cut would be "Haberdasher Blues," with Johansen on vocals and blues harp, as Perry and the band lay down the grittiest, most deeply grooved kind of Muddy Waters homage, yet do it on a song with tongue-in-cheek lyrics about a fellow obsessed with clothes.

"Haberdasher Blues' was just David and I having a laugh over those lyrics, and then going down and jamming over them," Perry said. "Like the rest of this album, my only requirement for the songs was that they had to be something that we can play live and enjoy - there was no other pressure to do it. As for the Muddy Waters vibe, I certainly love that music and he was a huge influence. When we did that one we were not too precious about it, and it is really a jam. We specifically didn't follow all the rules, and neither of us are classically trained blues players or however you'd put it. That song is just some 3 a.m. fun and his lyrics are a riot. Working on that cut, we had to edit out a lot of laughing, because we all kept cracking up."

Terry Reid might seem like an odd choice to younger fans, but veteran Beantown rock fans know that the British singer/guitarist was a mid-level star in the 1970s, and headlined the old Boston Tea Party several times - ironically the same site as last week's concert. We asked Perry if by chance he'd attended one of those Reid shows back in the day.

"I don't think we got into that many shows ourselves back then, but I think back in the late 60s (Aerosmith bassist) Tom Hamilton had a Terry Reid record. We were still watching that whole 'British Invasion' pretty closely, and we heard Terry and thought 'Holy (Bleep).' He and his band toured quite a bit back then, and didn't ever make the impact they should've. Later on we found out that Jimmy Page had asked Terry to join Led Zeppelin, but he decided to stick with his solo career. But when we were doing my album, Jack Douglas said 'Why don't you have Terry Reid come in?' and I jumped at the chance. Terry is living in Palm Springs, and I thought he'd be the right guy to give this music some backbone."

"If you're more toward the musicologist type of fan, you can easily see my roots in this album," Perry added. "I wanted it to be classic rock, but with a modern feel. Having someone like Terry Reid sing on it was not only a great honor, but I think you can hear why he would've fit in perfectly with Led Zeppelin and a lot of other things. So having him sing on three songs is another homage to those years, and I loved working with a bunch of like-minded guys. We were not trying to re-invent the wheel, but to play some songs that'd be a lot of fun to play live. Aside from 'Eve of Destruction,' all the rest of these songs are about that kind of live energy, and I think people need that kind of release these days, to take them away from everything else."

Perry said one of the most enjoyable parts of the new album was recording "Spanish Sushi," a soaring instrumental with his sons Roman and Tony accompanying him. Adrian, 36, and Tony, 30, had been the core of the rock group TAB the band, which released a couple albums, and later put out a third CD as Dead Boots. Their dad still thinks their band could've gone further, but they've left it behind to pursue careers connected to music. Adrian is an attorney specializing in contract law and intellectual property rights for a Manhattan law firm. Tony and Roman, 26, focus on engineering and production work.

"My oldest, who's in his early 40s, does all the social media work for Aerosmith, and this band, and my other stuff," said Perry. "So they're all connected to the music industry. It's in their blood, and they've kind of grown up on the road with us. 'Spanish Sushi' was a lot of fun for me. Working with either one of those two is a treat, because they are talented. They come at things from different angles, and yet they work well together. Tony is more into mixing, while the youngest is more into the electronics, but for me, it's just amazing to watch them working together, and they keep me up to date."